Twenty-fourth Annotation

12/16/08

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-ChernSS.html

This is a secondary source, which had informed me the works Chern had done on geometry field.
Studying the curvature of surfaces in spaces with more than three dimensions, he devised mathematical quantities that he called characteristic classes—now known as Chern classes—that differentiated different types of surfaces. The fields on which he had the greatest impact, global differential geometry and complex algebraic geometry, are fundamental to many areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, and his work at the foundation of gauge theory and string theory, among the most important developments of modern theoretical physics.